Abstract :
In ca. 286–282 BC the Seleucid admiral Patrocles reported that Indian goods sailed down the Oxus and across the Caspian ultimately reaching ports on the Black Sea. Some two centuries later, Marcus Terentius Varro also learned of this route. Modern scholarship has questioned the veracity of these accounts, regarding them as unfounded, or exaggerations of an insignificant commercial network. This paper re-examines the archaeological evidence gleaned from the eastern side of this exchange, at the Hellenistic site of Aï Khanoum in Bactria. It is argued that a number of items found at this city originated in the West as well as in India and even in China.